With gratitude to my friend Jane for inspiring these thoughts in our conversation today.

By the end of January and the official end of the Painting the Feminine course with Connie Hozvicka, I felt discombobulated.

Confusion over love tossed me inside out and outside in. What is love? Does it have to be sweet? Am I too sweet? Do I need to be angrier in order to get my perspective heard? What is the feminine way? Is the tiger mother polite when someone threatens her cub? Is it always right to turn the other cheek? What does resistance look like, when it is fueled by passionate love for protecting the rights of all life, including that of my self and my family and the earth on which we all depend.

Sometimes I just want to hiss and snarl over the stupidity that so many intelligent humans wear like a mask.

How can anyone not appreciate our dependence on this planet? Without this we have nothing, no cell phones, Ipads, GPS’s, food, clothing, finger nail polish, treadmills at the gym…nothing.

All the wealth in all the world cannot buy food that nourishes us if our dirt is toxic.

All the wealth in all the world cannot purchase water that quenches our thirst if the rivers, rains, springs and oceans are toxic.

All the wealth in all the world cannot guarantee fresh air to breath if essential oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide are not in right relationship. Remember this planet’s atmosphere did not always support the life forms we know now.

All the wealth in all the world protects no one!

We are in this planetary cocoon together and we’re experiencing caterpillar soup. Together we humans have the potential to metamorphose into a beautiful, wise wholeness we’ve never known before.

But that’s going to take fierce love and a devotion to faith.

Love is not just light, airy and scented with the flower in the muzzle of a gun. Love is also deep and dark and enlivened by the risk of moving through the birth canal – teetering on the edge between death and life. Love is gravity and obsession, gentle and kind, a courageous willingness to be present: to witness the wounding, to tend to the fear, to cradle the horror. Love creating creates the space, the energy to transform the grit of thinking I’m helpless to the radiance of seeing the possible.